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Fox has only one game Sunday — and it’s the Rams, again. Going to nine percent of the country.
(When you have to spell out a number rather than give its two-digit preferred presentation, there’s something less large about it).
Also, it’s the guys you heard try to mush through things a week ago. So they have some context to the Team Goff saga.
Go ahead, pinch yourself. Or stay in the greater adjacent Stockton area an extra day to avoid that holiday rush back to L.A. to see it bright and early.
CBS is granted doubleheader status Sunday and has a work-around for its afternoon offering, allowed to have in place something up against the Rams (you guessed it, the Chargers, so it’s not real gem). At least there’s the Raiders to watch on the TV monitors at Target during that vital day of shopping til you drop (and bring your extra bags with you — no one needs the indignity of paying an extra 10 cents a pop).
Everyone plays, and NFL Network doesn’t get any games, yet CBS ends up with three, and two each Fox and NBC. Pass the stuffing.

If you were ambivalent about Steve Levy, Brian Griese and Todd McShay calling last week’s USC-UCLA game for ESPN, perhaps you have an opinion now.
One less indecisive.
One more problematic.
The trio has been asked to do a repeat performance at the Coliseum for ESPN’s coverage of No. 12 USC (8-3) vs. Notre Dame (4-7) at the Coliseum (Saturday, 12:30 p.m.).
McShay loves these kinds of assignments so he can show how much he knows about ranking talent.
Griese doesn’t seem to care one way or another.
Levy has always been one of our stick-around-and-watch favorite “SportsCenter” anchors, and as a play-by-play man, we continue to hold his studio work in high esteem. You can’t call a game as if you’re reading from a “SportsCenter” script. Or going off-topic so much so that it appears the game in front of you is a distraction. Or trying to talk chummy stuff with Griese to show the audience you actually know each other.
Leave it to Levy to continue to gleefully mention last week that USC quarterback Sam Darnold’s grandfather was once the Marlboro Man commercial spokesman, but never give his name. Not even in a graphic later about Darnold’s athletic lineage.
(Or was it the producer’s call to not mention his grandfather’s name? You know we have ways of finding this stuff out if you just ask Twitter):

If you added the wins, losses and ties of the USC-UCLA series, you’d come up with 84, true. But that was the 86th meeting, because USC vacating the wins in 2005 and ’06 didn’t count in that W-L-T total, but they were actually played. Tickets were sold. People attended. Believe us, it happened.So FYI from the press notes: Notre Dame and USC are meeting for the 88th time coming up. The Irish lead the series 46-35-5, not counting USC’s 2005 win that was vacated as well because of NCAA sanctions.

As he remarked about the remarkable life of Vin Scully on Tuesday afternoon, after having already done short biographies on more than a dozen other activists, entertainers, scientists and historical figures in the room, President Barack Obama admitted he might not have been the best emcee for this Presidential Medal of Freedom recognition.
“I thought about him doing all these citations,” Obama said of the Dodgers’ retired broadcaster, “which would have been cool, but …”
The White House East Room erupted in laughter.
“I thought, we should make him sing for his supper.”
Obama then tried a brief Scully imitation, saying, “Up next …,” which drew more applause.More at this link …

We’re still thankful for rivalry post-turkey meetings — even though USC-UCLA came and went too fast, Yale denied Harvard a fourth straight Ivy League title, and all the SEC teams ate cupcakes last Saturday to bulk up for their head-to-head, do-or-die encounters.
With Michigan-Ohio State (Saturday, 9 a.m., Channel 7), we got Jim Harbaugh and his 10-1 No. 3 Wolverines up against Urban Meyer and his 10-1 No. 2 Buckeyes at Ohio Stadium, and neither may end up in the Big Ten championship game the following week (Penn State-Wisconsin looms). And neither may end up in the College Football Playoff Final Four?
How does that work?
With Alabama-Auburn (Saturday, 12:30 p.m., Channel 2), we focus on whether or not the 11-0 No. 1 Crimson Tide have anything left to prove, before going into the SEC championship game, or the CFP semifinals and then the championship game (Jan. 9, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., if your hostel reservations still haven’t been made.) Or will someone have a flashback to that 2013 Iron Bowl game-winning missed field goal (does that even make sense)?
With Colorado-Utah (Saturday, 4:30 p.m., Channel 11) and Washington-Washington State (Friday, 1:30 p.m., FS1), we’ve got the 9-2 No. 10 Buffaloes, 4-9 and 1-8 in conference last year, just one conference loss this year (to USC), with a shot at winning the Pac-12 South and going to the conference title matchup against the winner of the 10-1 No. 6 Huskies and 8-3 Cougars?
Then there’s USC-Notre Dame (Saturday, 12:30 p.m., ESPN). Brian Kelley best visit a local church before entering the Coliseum.More of the week ahead at this link.

When the Chicago Cubs won the World Series last month, some saw that as a sign of the apocalypse. All that was missing were frogs dropping from the sky.Gotham Chopra understood.“I grew up a Red Sox fan so I know what it’s like to be part of a cursed franchise,” the filmmaker said the other day. “Red Sox Nation suddenly wakes up one day and they’re part of the institution that was organized overnight. It’s a very different experience. Neither better nor worse, just different.”
The difference is, experiences like that have fueled Chopra’s curiosity into immersing himself in what became a six-part documentary series called “Religion of Sports,” which debuted this week on DirecTV’s Audience Network, with the first episode also available on the official website.
“I’m fascinated by the Cubs,” Chopra continued, “and saw the parade they had afterward and heard it described as the eighth-largest gathering of human beings in the history of civilization.
“Maybe there’s no better example, and no greater proof, that sports is a religion.”
See what he did there?In the current issue of Sports Illustrated devoted to football in America these days, a poll question asks: Is football more important than your ….
The answer “Religion,” as you can see, far out did “family” and “job.” Maybe beause football replaces religion in some way, shape or form with more than one of every four people, if you’re to believe these results.
The bulk of the Q-and-A with Chopra, the son of famous New Age spiritual leader Deepak Chopra, is at this link, but we have more below:

Q: This series isn’t so much about the glorification of sports stars as deities, it’s more on the culture of sports. But there is this worship of sports figures as gods. How might that be a whole different documentary?

A: Yeah, for sure. I’m careful about that as someone who has worked with a lot of athletes and has got to see how what they do on the field, or track or pitch. I’m a dad and can be with my 9-year-old son and say, ‘Look at this performance.’ It’s human potential performed. It’s mythic. But off the field, you don’t know these people, as human beings who deal with all the challenges. And sometimes because they’ve been so focused on this one aspect of their life, they’re off-the-field persona can be difficult, challenging, dark. I’m very conscious of all that and try to steer away from it. Because there clearly is a danger to that. Continue reading →

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